Progressive Web Apps in Microsoft Edge and Windows 10 | Hacker News Reader

Progressive Web Apps in Microsoft Edge and Windows 10

blogs.windows.com

45 pointstwapi6 comments

Wow, this is amazing!

"In the next release of Windows 10, we intend to begin listing PWAs in the Microsoft Store... The Microsoft Store, powered by the Bing crawler, will automatically index selected quality Progressive Web Apps"

First, Microsoft is encouraging devs to build with web technologies instead of Windows APIs. This is exactly the future their anticompetitive actions in the 90s were trying to prevent.

Now, they're now treating the desktop like a browser and their Store like a search engine. They've lost the API wars [1] so thoroughly that they're now dedicated to working for the other side.

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...

It's worth to notice that such PWAs will still be able to call UWP APIs. Also this is the natural continuation of Project Westminster, that originated in Windows 10: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/hosted...

this isn't even a recent shift though. The decoupling of .NET Framework / Visual Studio / SQL Server / IIS years ago was probably indicative of where the puck was going. I was considering buying a Xbox One X to replace my Xbox One but couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger because the only four things I could see as pluses (1. I like console Diablo 3 better than PC. 2. Madden. 3. UHD Bluray Player. 4. Faster hardware) didn't really warrant $500 (and the first two are functional on XB1 regular, just would admittedly look nicer) when I have a gaming PC that can play most of Microsoft's "Console Exclusives" which is another case where they don't force you into specific decisions.

Though I agree with your point that when the writing was on the wall, the pivot happened. Unfortunately, the reverse of that has been true as well. We had an issue with a vendor platform where we tested/developed everything in Chrome and it all worked fine. Then, as we're going live with this flip, we learn that the pagination is completely broken in IE9 and I believe IE10. Reason? Their pagination was appending extra elements (? or #, can't remember as it was about 3 years ago) which was against the standard (there could be only one). So in Google's saving you from yourself, they deviated from the standard which caused the platform to function incorrectly in another browser.

Let's also not forget their weaponizing of Google services when it comes to other platforms that aren't iOS (because splitting from that amount of marketshare would be ill advised).

> The Microsoft Store, powered by the Bing crawler, will automatically index selected quality Progressive Web Apps

I think this is the most interesting part. This is a great solution for App Stores because they are no longer gate keepers. Instead they become more like search engines by indexing content and providing a layer of metadata.

Google, for example, shows site that work well on mobile if you are searching on mobile.

Windows can now show sites that are "apps" if you are searching from the App Store.

Everyone gets the benefits of metadata such as comments, upvotes/stars, analytics, etc.

Hopefully this would get some traction so Apple would jump aboard, especially on iOS. Maybe we'd need some EU antitrust on not allowing different browser engines.

iOS is getting Service Worker support in 11.3 [1], this is one of the key foundations for PWA support, so the situation is improving. I reckon it’ll be a long time before we see PWAs in the App Store though!

1: https://caniuse.com/#search=Service

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